Fuel cells to power Apple’s data center?

Now this is an interesting bit of news – word on the street has it that Apple has plans to develop a huge fuel cell facility located in North Carolina, where its main purpose would be to deliver enough juice for the data center that powers iCloud, Apple’s cloud initiative for the millions and millions of iOS-powered mobile devices. Just how was this particular plan discovered? Well, Apple did file with the North Carolina Utilities Commission where this project is concerned, and Greensboro News & Observer were the ones who stumbled upon this tidbit over the weekend, claiming that this project will be the “national’s largest such project not built by an electric utility company.”

This particular fuel cell project will see the construction stage happen in Maiden, North Carolina, which is in close proximity to the company’s current data center and will be located within the same complex as Apple’s 171-acre solar farm. The News & Observer wrote, “[Apple’s] facility will consist of 24 fuel cell modules. It will extract hydrogen from natural gas supplied by Piedmont Natural Gas. To qualify as a renewable facility, Apple or Bloom will arrange to produce landfill methane gas or some other biogas to offset its natural gas use. The biogas supplier has not been named, but that information will have to be disclosed to win approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission.”

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple
Tags: Apple Inc, fuel cell